


The Visitor

by Beth H (bethbethbeth)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: snarryathon, M/M, time paradox
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-24
Updated: 2011-05-24
Packaged: 2017-10-19 18:08:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/203780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bethbethbeth/pseuds/Beth%20H
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Harry had started bringing out the Marauder's Map and examining it by wandlight. He was waiting for the moment when Ron's labeled dot would reappear in the corridors of Hogwarts..."  Ron's dot never did appear, but what the Map eventually reveals turns out to be far more surprising.   (Quoted section from Ch. 16 - "Godric's Hollow," <span class="u">Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows</span>)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Visitor

**Author's Note:**

> _Written as a late addition to[Snarry-a-Thon 11](http://asylums.insanejournal.com/snape_potter/664459.html)_
> 
> Many thanks to accioslash for allowing me to participate at the last minute - and to Femme for the beta.

Harry knows exactly what will happen to him if he's caught at Hogwarts by Filch or one of the Carrows; the Cruciatus would be the _best_ he could hope for.

He knows that Hermione would have tried to keep him from going if she'd had any idea what he was planning, would have told him he was taking an enormous and unnecessary risk, which is why he waited until she'd fallen asleep before slipping out of the tent - Marauder's Map in one hand and Invisibility Cloak in the other - and Apparating to the edge of the Forbidden Forest.

It's long past midnight when he arrives, and few lights shine in the castle. The illuminations over the main entrance - the ones that always greeted late-arriving visitors - have been extinguished, but there's a faint glow emanating from the windows of the Ravenclaw study room and an even fainter light atop the Astronomy Tower.

The Headmaster's office - _Snape's_ office - is lit so brightly that it hurts Harry's eyes to see it.

Snape is the reason that Harry - against all sense and reason - has come back to Hogwarts. Or rather, it's Snape's regular late-night visitor that has drawn Harry's attention.

The identity of the visitor is a mystery. The dot signaling his or her presence has appeared on the Map just after midnight, each and every night for the past month, but there's been no identifying label giving the unknown visitor's name. George once told Harry that some witches and wizards are able to completely disguise their magical signatures, but that the only people capable of doing such a thing are those with incredibly powerful magic. As far as Harry knows, neither his friends, nor his fellow members in the Order even come close to being able to harness enough magic to make such a feat possible.

The visitor is not Voldemort; Harry's seen the dot labeled _Tom Riddle, Jr_ appear twice in the Headmaster's office, although both times the unlabelled dot appeared immediately after Voldemort's _dis_ appearance. Whoever the unknown stranger is, he or she doesn't seem to have any particular desire to meet up with Lord Voldemort, a feeling with which Harry can more than sympathize.

Making certain his cloak is wrapped tightly around him, Harry slips into the castle through an all-but-forgotten passageway that _should_ open up into a broom cupboard on the ground floor. However, when Harry steps through the door, he finds himself facing the open entrance to the stairs leading up to the Headmaster's office from the seventh floor.

This isn't the first time the castle has, for reasons of its own, acted to either thwart or accommodate the wishes of a visitor, but before Harry has time to establish whether the castle is trying to help or hinder him, he hears the quiet murmur of voices coming from above. Taking a deep breath, Harry steps softly past the statue of the gargoyle and makes his way up the stairs.

Four steps from the top, Harry sees that the door to the Headmaster's office is open. 'In for a sickle, in for a Galleon,' he thinks as he creeps up the remaining steps and peers around the corner.

The loathing he feels when he sees Snape's ugly, despised face for the first time in months is so strong that Harry fears his hatred might actually be audible, but neither Snape nor his visitor, cloaked and hooded in the distinctive robes of the Unspeakables, turn toward the doorway.

"You have to stop doing this," Snape says, in a quiet voice that sounds, for once, neither malicious nor mocking, but only...exhausted. "It isn't safe for you to be here."

"It isn't safe for _you_ to be here either," comes the soft reply. The voice is clearly male, and Harry thinks he might have heard it before, but he still has no idea who the other man might be. "And yet, here you are."

"Our situations are nothing alike," Snape snaps. "Have you given any thought to what could happen if you were to be discovered by one of my erstwhile compatriots? I could do nothing to protect you... _nothing_!"

"Severus," the other man says. "You need to calm down." Then the man reaches out and lays his hand on Snape's gaunt face. He strokes Snape's sharp cheekbone slowly with his thumb until Snape closes his eyes and sighs.

The sight of somebody willingly touching that greasy bastard is so horrifying that Harry almost retches, but...who is it that Snape couldn't protect this man _from_? It sounded like Snape meant other Death Eaters, but that wouldn't make any sense.

"You don't need to protect me, not anymore," the man says quietly. "You haven't had to protect me for decades."

Snape opens his eyes and...smiles? "Old habits die hard."

The other man laughs softly, then leans in and Harry shuts his eyes, but not quickly enough to miss seeing the man actually kiss Snape on the nose. Next time, Harry thinks, he'll listen to the nagging of his inner Hermione voice when it tells him something sensible like _not_ to go to Hogwarts.

Pushing his hood back far enough to reveal messy dark hair just starting to go grey, the unknown man leans in to kiss Snape again, then says "In any case, nobody's going to find me here because nobody _did_ find me here."

Snape shakes his head in disgust. "Only a complete dunderhead would trust to bloody time paradoxes. And what about your idiotic younger self?"

"Don't worry about him," the man says with a laugh. "He's..."

And then there's silence.

The man whips his head around and faces the open doorway, his eyes - bright green behind a pair of Muggle glasses - are wide, and his expression almost _amused_.

Snape frowns and within an instant, his wand is in his hand, but the man - the suddenly all-too-familiar man - shakes his head and rests his hand on Snape's arm. "It's all right, Severus."

"Are you absolutely certain, Harry?"

"I'm certain," he says with a smile. "In any case, my younger self is, if I'm not mistaken, currently experiencing something of an epiphany. And as for my older self, I think it would like to spend the rest of the evening in some more enjoyable way than debating the pros and cons of my visitation schedule during this hellish year, because I think it's only fair to tell you that's one argument you aren't going to win."

"I don't need a minder, you know," Snape mutters.

"No," the man - Harry, himself? - says. "But I happen to know you need a friend."

"A friend?" Snape says, raising one eyebrow.

"A friend. One who loves you."

* * *

Amongst the many subjects considered worthy of investigation by those who find themselves employed by the Department of Mysteries, the workings of the mind - in all its twists and turns - is one of the most interesting.

How is it that a healthy young man of good intelligence (although not, it must be admitted, of a particularly _scholarly_ bent, at least at this juncture in his life) could observe with some interest - and not a little bit of horror - his own future playing out before him, and yet after a single return Apparition and one short sleep, could awake the following day having no more memory of the events of the previous night than he might have done had it all been nothing more than an exceptionally vivid dream.

This could not be explained by anything so simple as an Obliviate.

No, this was a case of the human mind trying to protect itself from something it was absolutely, under no circumstances, really-I-mean it, not ready to accept - and succeeding magnificently.

*

Until one day, twenty years later, when Harry Potter enters his office in the Department of Mysteries and is greeted by Severus Snape....

* * *

**Author's Note:**

>  _ **Prompt:** #9 - Set during Deathly Hallows. Harry looks at the Marauders Map every night in the tent he's sharing with Ron and Hermione, and discovers that Severus Snape keeps meeting someone unexpected (your choice who this is). Intrigued, he sneaks into Hogwarts under his Invisibility Cloak to find out what's going on._


End file.
